An Invaluable Secret

Do you hate it when your food is fresh? Yeah, I didn't think so. The only person I know of who might possibly complain about the freshness of food is Oscar the Grouch. And for the most part, I like my food to be as fresh as possible too...but when it comes to eggs, we know what fresh means there: the impossibility of peeling them. My mom told me of an apocryphal she'd-be-a-good-wife test that used to take place in Egypt back in the day...give the lady in question a freshly laid egg. If, after boiling, she could successfully peel it, she was worth marrying.
Now, I've heard it said that if you leave your eggs in the fridge for 5 days, that should make them easy to peel. That simply hasn't worked for the eggs I buy. Observe les oueffes:

Believe it or not, these organic beauties are from Costco! Does anyone know if Costco in Canada sell organic eggs now too? My ability to re-reside there depends on the answer to that question...but I digress.
So I'm not sure if these eggs are just ultra fresh, or if being organic has anything to do with it, but I simply cannot peel them cleanly for the life of me (thank God my engagement to Brian wasn't based on that!) Even leaving them for a week doesn't change things. But today, my world was changed. I learned the trick to peeling ultra fresh eggs. Are you ready? Boil your eggs as you usually do, to your liking. I like to put mine in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, turn off heat, and leave them on the burner for 12-13 minutes (this is for hard boiled). Now, once they are cooked, place them immediately in an ice water bath for 1 minute (I did this for 2). You already knew that, right? But here's the part I didn't know about: as the eggs are resting in the ice bath, bring the pot of water back to a simmer. When the minute is up, return the eggs to the simmering water for 10 seconds. What this does is expand the shell (without further cooking the eggs, since it's only 10 seconds). I tried it, and it worked pretty well! I hope this makes your kitchen eggsperiences more enjoyable :)